


another day in paradise

by sightstone (symmetrophobic)



Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Gen, bang centric, genfic, thoughts fic from finals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 18:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12636897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symmetrophobic/pseuds/sightstone
Summary: Mind over matter, as Junsik's always remembered it. Because if they mind, then you don't matter.





	another day in paradise

**Author's Note:**

> so this started as just a place for me to vent feelings, inspired mostly when i thought about [this picture](https://i.imgur.com/gdgtm9d.jpg) following up [this picture](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DNyAzTeVQAAbOuV.jpg) :""") plus the flak that bang's been receiving for how he played at worlds as compared to the rest, particularly faker, and the fact that they've been considered the veterans of SKT from '15 till now.
> 
> it's a platonic, 50/50 bang-centric/golden trio fic, aka i don't know how many people will read this but if you do, i will be eternally grateful~ comments will be appreciated, sadness shared is sadness halved \o/
> 
> as usual, thank you to ray for beta <3

People are like dreams.

Sometimes you forget how friendships start. Sometimes they’re just there, and one day you know each other more than you know a lot of other people, maybe more than you should. One day you’re just caught up in the web of _them_ , and they’re woven so tightly into your being it’s difficult to imagine a life where you don’t have them.

But people come and people go, and sometimes they tear themselves, stitch by stitch, out of the fabric of your soul, so the hole in your heart is the only thing you have to assure yourself they ever existed.

Junsik has a better grasp on cold soju shot glasses than he has on the people in his life.

He traces the rim of the one he’s holding now, cold and smooth, with mild disinterest, pressing his trigger finger into the edge until it’s streaked white and pink, nail biting into the flesh.

Then he tips the alcohol down his throat, anticipating the way his insides freeze over and burn. He tries to see how many bottles he’s finished already, but he can’t count past two. Eventually, Junsik gives up, finishing the one he’s on now and crumpling messily back onto a damp pillow, watching the soft hotel room lights wink kindly down at him.

They’d mostly been left on their own for the night – Junggyun’s talk after the match had helped, but it doesn’t stop the metaphorical ground from shaking under his feet with every step he takes out and away from the arena and on their ride back.

Sanghyeok hadn’t spoken much since they’d left. Jaewan’d been quiet, too, but not enough to worry anyone. Wangho and Sungu had been whispering in the backseat, Seunghoon staring out the window with his earbuds in, body folded in against the door, like he didn’t think he should be close to any of them now.

And Junsik had leaned back against the headrest, closed his eyes and tugged at the woven bracelets around his wrist, till they cut welts into his flesh, red and painful, like the defeat that’d flashed across his screen as the last game ended, and it'd been over.

*

It’s sometime after three in the morning when Junsik stumbles out into the hallway in hotel slippers and a loose hoodie. The lucidity had set in after he’d thrown up in the toilet, but that just made him feel worse, and he pads quietly down the carpeted floor, throat itching for water, hoping no one will hear him.

He’s freezing by the time he gets to the function room that’s been booked for them, shrouded in darkness and silent except for the hum of air-conditioning. He moves, half by muscle memory and half by the poor light, towards the computers, stopping once he’s there.

Junsik’s already late.

Jaewan’s at the seat beside his (of course he’d be, he always is), already halfway through a game of League, face cast in a glow from the monitor. He turns a little when he hears Junsik approaching, eyes dark and watchful behind the frame of his glasses, before he glances at the chair beside him, then sideways, cautiously.

Junsik follows his gaze turns by just a fraction, slowly registering the sight of Sanghyeok at his own computer one seat away from Jaewan. He hadn’t even turned around. His legs are gathered to his chest, socked feet poking out from his sweatpants, buried in one of their old SKT jackets, eyes fixed on the game he’s playing.

The burn in Junsik’s throat descends, slowly, sears all the way down his airways to his chest, and he takes a step back, detouring messily to Seunghoon’s computer instead.

This – this retreat, denial, coping mechanism, whatever anyone wants to call it, is all that they know.

Happy? Play League. Sad? Play League. Tired? Play League.

Lost the match of your life and don’t know how you’ll ever face your friends and family and country again?

Junsik starts the client and logs into his account, getting into queue and pressing his earbuds in.

He’s three games in, two wins and one loss, before he starts to feel some sort of reassuring, twisted sort of normalcy settle in. There’s nothing else. Nothing else but this.

Nothing else but this for _six years_ , and still, tonight, it’d all come down to nothing.

Junsik stares into a grey screen, chest still burning two hours in, like a silent, poisonous monster’s forcing its way out of his throat, setting bitter explosives on a timer between his jaws.

Then he draws a hiccupping, quiet breath, biting down onto his lip until he draws blood, feels the wounds burn as it catches the tears running down his face.

In the tinted glass behind the monitor, he can just make out the lines of his face, screwed up and paralysed with the poison of fear and anger and an overwhelming sense of what he realises is shame, and looks away, back at the game he’s losing.

Crying is disgusting. It starts like a needle in your nose, fire in your eyes, toxin in all the muscles in your face that make you scrunch up reflexively. Then that needle hits the pipes in your head and it falls like a thunderstorm, until you’re nothing but a crumpled little bag of yourself.

Junsik cries, and it rains, it pours.

It’s eight in the morning by the time he hears someone leave, and turns to see Jaewan disappear through the door, probably back to his room. He logs off once his own game ends, standing shakily as he shuts down the computer, wondering if he’ll finally be able to sleep.

He looks over to Sanghyeok’s seat, numbed over to the sight of him leaning over, fast asleep on the tabletop, client still open on his monitor.

There’s something dark he’s using as a pillow – Junsik’s propelled closer, just able to make out Jaewan’s jacket, folded and carefully tucked under Sanghyeok’s head.

He wants to do something. Wants to know something he can do that’ll carry the weight of the _sorry_ on the tip of his tongue he hasn’t been able to say.

But he can’t. Doesn’t. Won’t. Instead he takes one of the bottles from the common table and places it carefully by Sanghyeok’s head, before he leaves silently, walking around the fingers of sunrise that are creeping into the hallways, like he’s afraid the light will burn once it touches him.

*

They’re packing up later that day, bundling up their peripherals and keeping everything for the flight back, the atmosphere lighter than last night but still subdued. Seunghoon seems better, chatting with Wangho, and the staff are really trying their best to cheer them up, talking about going home and holidaying and all the nice things they’re going to eat together.

Junsik’s peripherals almost knock over a bottle of water near the monitor on his right. The same bottle he’d left this morning, seal unbroken, completely untouched.

He glances over to where Sanghyeok’s standing, straight backed at one of the tables, helping to arrange some equipment, listening to Jaewan speak quietly.

He still hasn’t spoken with either of them yet.

“Junsik-ah?”

He turns back, feeling disoriented. “Sorry?”

One of the female staff smiles tentatively. “Can I take your picture? For the twitter account? Just something to assure the fans things are okay.”

Wangho laughs from some distance away, where he’s chatting with another staff member. Sungu’s snacking on some of the leftover biscuits from the previous nights. It’s like none of it had ever happened.

Junsik etches a smile onto his face, and turns around, putting down his peripherals. “Sure.”

*

Three years. Four, depending on how you look at it. Junsik knows it’s stupid, but he builds the foundation under his feet around the people in his life. When Sungung’d left, it’d shaken him to the core, had him crying for hours. It was _understandable_ , the reason why he’d wanted to go, and maybe that’d just made it more painful.

It’s _understandable_ , why Sungung had wanted to leave them.

(To leave him.)

But it’d been okay. Even before that, Junsik’d had the rest of them. He’d had Jaewan’s scathing laughter and Sanghyeok’s wry smirk to get them through the worst of it. He’d had the constant nagging and dismissive grins. A house made of three hearts, the unspoken promise of a temporary forever right here, in the chaos of everything else.

And with that rock under his feet, opening up to new people hadn’t seemed all that bad. It was okay to let people weave themselves into his life, because once they tore away, he knew there’d always be someone there to patch him up.

He lets people like Yechan and Sungu in, people like Seunghoon, with their big, bright smiles and infectious, volatile laughter.

But at the end of the day, the house had remained, and Junsik was home.

“Hyung, are you going to eat that?”

Junsik looks down at the airplane food, then at Sungu, peering hopefully over at his chicken.

“Go ahead,” he says, nudging the food closer, and the younger boy attacks the chicken, thanking him gleefully.

Most of them are still asleep. Wangho’s napping comfortably in a neck pillow, and Seunghoon’s on his phone, whispering about the best fried chicken places in Seoul with another staff member.

They don’t know what it’s like. To them, the loss had just been a bad dream, a flunked test, and they could just wake up and try again tomorrow.

For Junsik, the wins had been the dream. And every passing year was like a step closer to the guillotine, a question of just how long he could make the dream last.

Because waking up meant reality, and reality was a nightmare.

“What will you be doing when you’re home?” Sungu whispers through a mouthful of rice. He passes it off as a casual question, but Junsik knows he’s concerned.

The staff and the rest of the team have been treading on glass eggshells around the three of them these past few days, especially Sanghyeok, knowing his tendency to clam up about things like these.

“See my parents. Remind my friends I’m alive. The usual,” Junsik prods at a slice of fruit, smiling faintly at Sungu. “What’ll you do?”

He lets the other boy rattle off a list of itinerary, mostly involving eating, and glances over at Jaewan, now subject to Seunghoon’s ramblings about the food in China, nodding wordlessly and looking down.

Then Junsik looks over at the window seat, where Sanghyeok’s curled up in his seat under the blanket, food untouched and fast asleep, while Junggyun scribbles things on his notebook at the seat beside him, and turns his attention back to Sungu.

He’d been lost without a home, and now he floats, aimlessly, fingers closing around the fading memories of three years past and finding nothing.

*

“Like I said back in China, it’s not anyone’s fault in particular,” Junggyun reminds them, before the official date they’re allowed to go home. His eyes are fierce but not empty the way they would be between matches, and Junsik’s come to know his words at times like these as the closest he’ll ever get to good, honest truth. “And no matter what happens during the offseason, we’re going to regroup and recover, and SKT will be back, regardless of what anyone has to say about it,” he smiles wryly. “Now go get some rest, we don’t have long before Kespa Cup comes around – maybe we’ll finally get that one, this time.”

All of them are banned from the practice room, and Junsik isn’t leaving until a day later, so he does the one obvious thing that all washed up, defeated pros do at times like these.

The PC Bang he visits isn’t too far from the dorms, one they’ve passed by on their way to the office or to find food pretty often. He pulls his hood and cap low over his head, keeping his eyes averted as he signs in and pays for the standard first three hours before meandering over to one of the computers deeper in, plugging in his earbuds.

The place isn’t too full at this hour, on a weekday afternoon, and he enjoys the relative peace, just broken by the occasional yelled cuss word or banter between friends.

Again, there’s that drug-like effect as he gets into one game, then another, soothing over the otherwise crippling, dull little jolts of panic every time he thinks about the match that’d taken place just under a week ago.

_I don’t think I need to say this, but don’t waste your time on Inven. People are angry and when they’re angry, they say stupid things. Focus on resting and we’ll discuss contract terms with the management when you’re back from vacation._

Junggyun’s words ring through Junsik’s head as he sits in queue for another game, staring at the wall behind the monitor, papered with Overwatch posters.

He’d tried. Really, he had. And it’s funny, how last year, he would’ve been the one telling a teary Sungu sternly that the things people said on Inven didn’t matter, that he’d be wasting his time on people who didn’t even care about him. But how could he just sit and pretend things weren’t happening?

So Junsik had gone on anyway, the night after the match was over, scrolled through pages upon pages of people telling him to go fuck himself, retire, kill his mother, stop dragging Faker and the rest of SKT down, and had washed everything down with alcohol till he couldn’t make the words out anymore.

 _Bang_ , part of the veteran line on SKT, never a part of the equation that needed to be worried about. The team had enough to fret over with the jungle and top changes, and mid and bottom were supposed to be solid, the pivots upon which the rest of the team was built.

But he knows just as well as Inven claims to that the problem that night had been him.

So what right did that leave him with to talk to Jaewan or Sanghyeok? What right did that give him to ever console Sungu again, or give Wangho tips on how to play?

Words were his weapon, and he lashed out at anyone who hurt him or the people close to him, enough to get him in trouble more often than not, because there was nothing else he could do, no way he could internalise it and brush it off to become stronger the way the others did.

He lost his place beside the throne the night he’d lost them the match. The night he’d singlehandedly lost Jaewan and Sanghyeok the only thing that’s mattered to them for as long as he’s known them.

The house had crumbled, and Junsik was homeless.

_Which seat? Over there?_

Junsik stirs, turning towards the sound instinctively, just catching a glance of the boy behind the counter talking to a girl, both muffling laughter into their hands.

He takes an earbud out despite himself.

They’re talking softer, now, so all he manages to catch is something about _Varus_ and more whispers about SKT.

This face to face thing was something new, something he’d never learnt to deal with.

In hindsight, maybe coming to a PC Bang so soon after his most recent horrific public failure wasn’t the best idea.

“It’s okay,” the boy says, a little louder. “It’s not like we’ll still have to see it happen in LCK next year, anyway – maybe TSM will take him? Better flash in than save flash, right?”

The girl lets out a half-laugh, half-shriek, ponytail flicking as she whips around to look at Junsik for a moment, pulling her jacket over her face and giggling into the counter.

The queue pops, and Junsik rejects it, staring into the open client. They’re still talking, and he just doesn’t want to think anymore, regretting having rejected the AFK check because he can’t do anything to take his mind off it now.

All of a sudden, he’s glad he only signed in for three hours, because he’s going to need more drinks after this.

Someone’s approaching, and Junsik scoots closer towards the corner, cursing his luck that someone would take a computer near his. Can’t he even be pathetic and miserable alone?

“Hey, loser.”

Junsik whirls around, looking up, seeing Jaewan slide into the seat next to him, hands in his pockets.

 _What the fuck?_ “What? How’d you get here?”

“We walked,” Jaewan says. _We_ , Junsik looks past Jaewan to see Sanghyeok waiting at the end of the row, wearing a grey hoodie and one of his signature white t-shirts. “Looked into every PC Bang on this street till we finally saw your ugly face here. Would be nice if you checked your phone more, I think I lost a toe to frostbite out there.”

 _It’s fourteen degrees, don’t exaggerate, dipshit_ , is something Junsik would’ve said on any other day, but now, he can’t.

“Hey!” The boy behind the counter finally seems to realise that other people have entered, surfacing from his conversation with the girl. “’Scuse me, you have to-…”

Sanghyeok turns around, and the boy chokes on air.

Jaewan looks back at Junsik, jerking his chin towards the door, the ghost of a smile on his face. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

*

They end up at some hotpot place, because Sanghyeok’s developed cravings since China, and Jaewan doesn’t mind as long as it’s food.

Jaewan unzips his jacket, stirring the soup with a ladle, and Sanghyeok retreats comfortably to his phone, opening a cat video, as Junsik pokes nonchalantly at a piece of pumpkin with his chopsticks.

“It’s like I’m your mom,” the support continues to complain, dumping vegetables into the soup once it’s hot enough. “Messaging you asking where you are, going to PC Bangs to check if you’re still alive – I’m not that old yet.”

“Don’t talk about being old,” Sanghyeok says absent-mindedly, snagging a quail egg from the soup and popping it into his mouth.

Jaewan smacks at his hand, talking about _hygiene_ and _it’s not cooked yet_ , to which Sanghyeok responds that it’s _already cooked, what were you saying about not being a mother_.

It’s funny, how they were the ones most devastated after the match was over, crumpled over the desks with their head in their arms, while Junsik had been the one standing between them, one hesitant hand on Sanghyeok’s back, and yet here they are now, as if Junsik’s the only who still remembers.

They joke about going home, about meeting their parents and begging for their forgiveness, and Jaewan throws something out about girlfriends that make them laugh – it used to be a thing with Junsik, tossing cruel barbs Jaewan’s way when his girlfriend left him those years ago. Their inside jokes are built on the scars in their life, and laughing about it helps them forget the pain ever existed. That was the way they’d operated, the three of them.

Now, fear weighs heavy on their backs, and the louder they laugh, the further it retreats.

Junsik wants to order drinks, but Jaewan insists that _it’s hotpot, you drink tea with hotpot_ , so they end up with a teapot of jasmine and all in all, things aren’t so bad.

“I need a new charging cable,” Sanghyeok announces, spearing a piece of fishcake on his chopsticks. “My old one died last night.”

“We could go shopping later,” Jaewan shrugs. “Or we could get it when we’re all back. I know a place.”

“It spoilt because of the way I put my phone when I go to bed,” Sanghyeok says critically. “I’m going to get an extension cable, too.”

Of course, Sanghyeok would be able to casually plan upgrades to his room in the dorms – all Junsik’s been thinking about is how many trips it might take to move all his stuff out.

Jaewan looks over at Junsik. “You need anything?”

“Yeah,” Junsik shrugs. “Universal adaptor, maybe.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then Jaewan’s the first to crack up, howling with laughter into the hotpot, and Sanghyeok follows, grinning like he’s just won a 1v1 against either of them in League.

Junsik’s the last to join in, hesitantly at first, then laughing as much as Jaewan is, till tears are running down his face.

“Oh _shit_ ,” Jaewan’s got his glasses off, dabbing at his eyes with a wet towel, tossing an unopened packet over to Junsik. “That was a good one, _fuck_.”

“Don’t worry about not being able to eat hotpot,” Junsik continues, this time at Sanghyeok. “I’ll treat you if you come visit me in China.”

Sanghyeok goes into full blown laughter, and they’re messes, all three of them, sprawled over the table laughing.

“I’ll join you, if I survive the public wrath,” Jaewan sniffs, going for a piece of meat in the hotpot. “C’mon, we’re a fucking two-time world championship botlane, we’ve got international bargaining rights. We can,” he starts giggling again. “We can ask _Bumhyeon_ for tips - hyung, you’ve really gotta teach us how to take this whole _second place_ thing-…”

This has them all in stitches again.

“Stop laughing and pass the meat,” Sanghyeok says, fighting back a grin.

“Oh, wow, I think God just spoke to me,” Junsik says drily, one hand raised in surrender as he passes the plate over. “Let this meat passing be a step forward in me paying for my misdeeds-…”

“You can start by not holing yourself up in a shitty PC Bang and actually picking up your phone,” Jaewan snipes.

“Quiet, lowly support,” Junsik grins, as Sanghyeok slides more meat into the soup.

“Better a support than a pink ward,” the midlaner interjects, and Junsik throws his head back and laughs again.

And in that moment, Junsik feels the monster in his throat ebb away, laughed out into the open, simultaneously accepting and brushing off the fact that he’d failed right in that moment.

_It’s okay. It’s okay to want to get up and move on after you fall, even if you think you don’t deserve to._

*

They get politely chased out, eventually, and stumble in the cold until they get to a convenience store, where they get way too tipsy for just a few bottles of soju (Junsik and Jaewan do, anyway, Sanghyeok just watches and snickers when they make a mess).

Then, being three washed up, defeated pros at a time like this, there’s clearly only one thing for them to do.

Despite the peak hour, they’re miraculously able to snag three seats at the nearby PC Bang together, a different one from the one Junsik had visited this afternoon.

Naturally, they fall into their old positions as they sit down and log in, Sanghyeok on the inside, then Junsik, then Jaewan, and Junsik complains about having to alternate his earbuds to hear them both from where he’s seated in the middle.

All three of them then proceed to fail spectacularly at Overwatch together, then Starcraft, and Jaewan’s trying to bully both of them into playing Hearthstone with him when something moves out of the corner of Junsik’s eye.

He can barely hear over the general yells and shouts in the vicinity, but the boy approaching speaks confidently. “Excuse me, are you SKT?”

Immediately, Junsik stiffens, looking the kid up and down, biting back the _what do you want_. He’s wearing a hoodie and a cap, with sharp eyes, like the boy back at the previous PC Bang.

“Yes?” Jaewan replies, the only one with sufficient social skills to deal with strangers.

Then the boy thrusts out his Razer mousepad earnestly, along with a marker. “Can you sign my mousepad please?”

None of them really know what to do for a moment. Then Jaewan takes the mousepad and the marker, smiling. “Sure.”

“All of you?” The boy doesn’t sound like he can quite believe what he’s saying, grin spreading across his face like Christmas came early.

Then Jaewan passes the mousepad to Junsik with a nudging sort of smile, and the AD carry takes the marker slowly, blinking, before putting his signature on the fabric.

Then the boy looks over somewhere, making a face, and suddenly, another boy sprints over out of nowhere with his own mousepad wildly, grinning too. “Sorry, if it’s not too much trouble, can you sign mine too?”

“Thought you said you were too _scared_ ,” the first boy pushes him, snickering. “I was here first, go get your own marker.”

Then, as if the second boy had sparked something, a whole bunch of them race over, one holding a mouse, another holding his entire keyboard, all giddy and laughing from nerves.

“There go my Hearthstone dreams,” Jaewan grumbles, and Junsik laughs, about as nervous as all of them are, for some reason.

“You guys are the best,” the second boy says breathlessly, once he gets his mousepad back. “You’re legends! My friend said you were washed up, I told him to go jump in a river.”

“The SKT reign hasn’t ended yet, as long as you’re still around!”

Another one pokes his head out of the crowd, waving his iPhone. “Samsung sucks anyway!”

A girl fights to keep her spot in a crowd of boys, hood falling back as she lurches forward with her mechanical mouse. “It doesn’t matter what other people say,” she says fiercely. “You’re the _kings_ , we’ll support you wherever you go.”

The first boy is resolutely still in his position, unwilling to yield the hard-earned prize of seeing them so easily. He looks directly at Junsik when he says: “You guys are going to smash in Spring. Samsung took revenge this year. Next year is yours.”

The impromptu fanmeeting ends when the staff chases the kids back to their computers for making too much noise fifteen minutes later. Their time runs out soon after, and as the three of them leave, chants of SKT actually start, fading as they walk away.

“You know I’ve heard of these things happening,” Jaewan says, as they’re walking back to the dorms. “Didn’t think it’d ever actually _happen_ , though.”

“I hope they didn’t see how bad you were at Overwatch,” Sanghyeok comments, and Jaewan scoffs.

“Okay, how about we talk about how bad _you_ were at Starcraft-…”

They jabber on until they’re almost back, and the general reassurance that’d settled in the pit of Junsik’s stomach starts to flicker away as he stares up at the building.

_What if I never make it back here?_

_And even if I do, what if they want to go?_

“…-yeah, might be visiting Bumhyeon tomorrow, he wants to eat something nice and apparently I take really twitter-worthy pictures of him,” Jaewan rolls his eyes. “He just likes taking selfies with me because he doesn’t have to worry about being the uglier one.”

“He can just ask Seohaeng for that, can’t he?” Sanghyeok’s back on his phone, playing some weird architecture game.

“Seohaeng-hyung is _busy_ ,” Jaewan mimics in a whine, before stuffing his hand in his pocket. “It’s nice to know they’re all still close, though – Wangho said he was going to the noraebang with them tonight. I hope he can still hear things by the time he’s back.”

They’re in the lift going up, now, and Junsik stares at the little buttons near the lift door.

“There’ll never be another team like the ROX Tigers,” he echoes the Naver article title drily.

“Yeah,” Sanghyeok grunts, not looking up from his phone. “Noraebangs are overrated anyways, I hope we go to PC Bangs instead, next time.”

Junsik glances at him wordlessly, breath catching in his chest.

“ _Or,_ we could café-hop if you guys would just _go with me_ -…”

The conversation devolves into Jaewan’s nagging and Sanghyeok’s dry, one-word responses, then, all the way to their rooms, and as they’re toeing off their shoes, walking back to their rooms-…

“It’s nice to be back,” Junsik mumbles, fidgeting with the bracelets around his wrist, the closest to a confession he’ll ever be capable of. Sanghyeok’s already disappearing off to the bathroom, but Jaewan raises a brow from where he’s grabbing a fresh set of clothes from his closet, the corner of his lips tilting up, like he knows.

Because he does.

“See you when we get back,” he says, in the tone one would typically use to make a promise, before leaving the room, humming an old trot song.

So the house remains, and Junsik is home.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> long live skt, and long live this family \o/

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [oathsworn (onelastchence)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onelastchence/pseuds/oathsworn) Log in to view. 




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